Security checkpoint wait times dropped significantly at Denver International Airport in June and eased at other airports across the nation, thanks to what officials say is a major overhaul of the way they keep passengers safe.
It took travelers an average maximum of 18 minutes to pass through Transportation Security Administration screening at DIA last month, compared with the average maximum of 25 minutes logged from February to May, airport officials said.
The overall average wait time at DIA so far this month has been 10 minutes or less, according to TSA.
“Over the past month, I think we have dramatically changed the experience for passengers,” TSA chief Peter Neffenger said Monday at the Global Business Travel Association conference in Denver. “The things that you’re hearing about we’ve tackled, we’ve changed.”
The cut in wait times represents a major improvement over the interminable lines travelers faced leading up to Memorial Day weekend, and eased worries that checkpoints would be strangled during what’s expected to be one of the busiest travel seasons ever.
Instead of fretting about canceled trips and missed flights, TSA says travelers should expect lines to get even shorter as the agency becomes more efficient — especially through automation — and boosts its workforce.
“The way in which we were running our daily operations always had us chasing problems as opposed to anticipating problems that may occur,” Neffenger said in an interview with The Denver Post after speaking at the convention. “We dramatically turned things around over Memorial Day.”
TSA has brought on 1,400 new screeners through accelerated hiring and Congressional authorizations and has converted about 1,000 part-time jobs to full-time positions. The agency also began a daily teleconference with security and operations officials from airlines and the nation’s top 30 airports — including DIA — to discuss looming issues and how to approach them proactively.
Meanwhile, enrollment in TSA’s PreCheck continue to rise; last week about 11,500 people signed up each day for the $80 program that speeds up the security experience.
In metro Denver, waits of more than a month to apply for the status have gone away, and the agency is looking to expand the number of PreCheck sign-up locations from the three it currently has at the airport, and in Thornton and Lakewood. TSA will open a temporary signup location Aug. 2-6 at the Hyatt Place Denver/Cherry Creek, 4150 E Mississippi Ave. in Glendale.
“It’s a work in progress,” Neffenger said. “We haven’t reached perfection — we probably never will. We’re actually not high-fiving and taking a whole lot of bows right now. We are working hard to continue this and sustain this into the future. This is the new operating model.”
Memorial Day, the summer travel season’s first test, came and went without any major hiccups. The average passenger nationwide waited just 10 minutes to get through security, with no one traveler waiting more than 49 minutes. That’s a big change from the waits of an hour or more that grabbed headlines in Denver and elsewhere in the weeks before.
At the beginning of the summer, airport officials were advising travelers to get to the airport at least three hours before their flights. But on Sunday, the average checkpoint wait at DIA was a scant 10 minutes, with a maximum of 26 minutes, TSA officials said.
“I haven’t heard of any real crazy wait times out there,” said Shane Downey, director of public policy for the Global Business Traveler’s Association. “We just haven’t seen it since after the Memorial Day weekend.”
Downey, while walking around GBTA’s 6,500-attendee conference at the Colorado Convention Center, said the lack of long lines is important to the membership he represents. Decreasing delays is beneficial economy-wide, he explained, making travelers feel more comfortable and more willing to spend money traveling by air.
“When you’re feeling better about an overall trip, you are more likely to book that next that next (excursion),” Downey said.
United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz told The Post on Monday that overhauling the travel experience has been a major goal and that security is at the forefront of that battle.
“The whole traveling experience, particularly flying, is something that we, the industry, have made very difficult and not very pleasant,” he said. “By the time that you get to one of our planes, you’re not very happy with us, regardless of what we do. Anything that makes the experience, while you’re at the airport or around it, better for travelers, there is a big win.”
Under TSA’s shift in philosophy, Munoz said United has been brought to the table to aid in resolving some of those issues by providing the agency with expertise in workforce and complex-operations management. The airline expects to keep providing support, including some staff, through the end of the year.
“Together we have come up with procedures, processes, systems and policies that sort of make that a little bit easier,” he said. “It has been helpful to work together with them.”
DIA spokesman Heath Montgomery said the airport, too, is committed to help and will supplement TSA’s staff through at least Labor Day. He said TSA the airport that the assistance has been a “tremendous help in freeing up some of their staff to focus on security tasks.”
Neffenger said the ultimate goal is to depart from the persistent sentiment that TSA checkpoints are painful. Ensuring security, he said, doesn’t have to mean wasted time and frustration.
“What I want to get away from is: ‘Oh, my god, here we go,’ ” Neffenger said.
Updated July 19, 2016 at 7:55 a.m. Because of a reporter’s error, an earlier version of this story failed to make a distinction between the maximum average security line wait at Denver International Airport and the overall average. Passengers experienced an average maximum wait of 18 minutes in June, down from 25 minutes in the February-to-May period. Overall average wait times in June were 10 to 12 minutes, according to Transportation Security Administration data.
